As with all else in life, technology has created a fork in the road regarding the holiday season, specifically the gift-giving part.
Between the convenience of browsing from home and three years of pandemic-era social distancing, consumers have grown habituated to honoring friends and family by clicking a link on Amazon.
That may be convenient, but it doesn’t build much holiday spirit.
The best thing about this time of year is the way Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa encourage us to connect with one another — with our communities, our neighbors, and yes, our neighborhood businesses.
Beyond the obvious boost to local economies, shopping in person is an effort made to demonstrate our feelings about others and what they mean to us. It requires thoughtfulness. It means putting your hands on the item you’re going to choose for someone else. In that sense, it both symbolizes and reinforces connection.
The same cannot be said for scrolling through a page on a website and clicking a “Buy Now” button. That act turns holiday shopping into a chore, rather than an opportunity to celebrate or strengthen bonds.
Stepping into a neighborhood shop goes well beyond supporting those proprietors and their employees, though that is important. Shopping local provides an annual check-in with the home team. Maybe you pop into a store and catch up with a worker you’ve known for years, or share a joke or an observation about what remains the same despite so much change in all our lives.
Or maybe you spot a new business and dart in to browse its unfamiliar shelves. Maybe you find something that reminds you of someone you hadn’t even planned to shop for. Maybe on the spur of the moment, you buy it for them.
Either way, you’re thinking about others, affirming bonds. Amazon, convenient though it may be, provides the very opposite of that experience. It is checking a box, interacting with a cyborg.
In rural areas, incidentally, the demands of Amazon package deliveries at holiday time are causing havoc for mail carriers from Minnesota to the San Juan Islands, according to a recent report. (In large cities, Amazon has its own network of delivery drivers. But in more remote regions, mail carriers routinely use their personal vehicles to distribute the mail, including Amazon packages.)
Admittedly, shopping in person, rather than by touch screen, means standing in line at the post office. But that, too, is a way to connect with your community.
